


If Heroes Never Die, What Happens To The Rest Of Us?

by Frootz



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-26 23:31:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9929093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frootz/pseuds/Frootz
Summary: I was commissioned to write a piece based on Mercy discovering her ability to resurrect the recently deceased for the first time. That's pretty much it!





	

Maybe it had been a foolish optimism that had filled her heart. The Omnic Crisis had ended, peace had been established and the world could finally begin to heal. Overwatch was there, guiding with a firm hand and rushing to pick up the pieces left behind. Angela had spent months working on the field with their medical staff, finding the lost, the sick, the injured, and nursing them back to health. Her invitation to Overwatch was only after they had been globally recognized by the United Nations, but she still felt the aftermath of the crisis deep in her heart. 

Seeing the broken bodies, the rotting corpses buried beneath the rubble, and the orphans gathered up to be led to a safer place had made her ache for her parents. Every time she healed a patient she thought of her father lying still and cold in his uniform; every moment she spent developing her nanotechnology she had the image of her mother's broken body at the forefront of her mind. War had taken from her the only thing she had ever knew, and her strength and ability gave her the power to prevent this loss for others. The only thing that had hurt her more than her parents' deaths was knowing she couldn't save everyone.

It had a year since the final signing of the peace treaties, she had finished her Valkyrie suit late in the period of rescue and recovery, but she hadn't expected to use it again so soon. Especially not so close to home. The world wasn't so naive as to believe that the fighting was over, they expected conflict over the new rights given to the omnics, no-one was convinced that their robotic brothers and sisters would be allowed to simply assimilate into human society at the drop of a hat. However, no one had expected the rioting to be so horribly violent.

Angela had feared the worst when Overwatch dispatched her to her homeland, even the thought of seeing fighting in Sweden had caused her to quiver with the same terror and loss she held on the day her father's commanding officer had sat her down with a gentle voice and took her entire universe away. When they had touched down it had taken both Amari and Wilhelm to coax her out of the aircraft, both of them no doubt shaken by the sight of the unbreakable Dr. Ziegler, the same one that rushed into flame and gunfire to rescue countless civilians and soldiers alike, with her thin frame trembling like a leaf. For the first time since joining the medical field, she had hesitated to rush into the fray, hesitated to save a life. All she could see among the wounded were the faces of her parents, empty and lifeless.

Morrison had approached her, followed by the worried stares of the other soldiers as they watched her fall apart before them. He placed a firm hand on her shoulder, giving her a hard but gentle look.

"I know how hard it can be on the home front, Dr. Ziegler. Nothing hurts more than seeing your own people, your own country torn apart in front of you. I never really understood war until I saw the omnics marching on American soil, but they needed me, and we need you. Those people out there are your people, Angela. They need you to be strong for them."

Shame filled her, and anger at herself had stilled her muscles. Her hands moved on their own, starting up the Valkyrie suit and preparing her staff for the arduous work to come. She may have been stopped by her fear and grief, but she would overcome it to save as many as she could. Morrison smiled at her, and returned to his squadron as she turned a steely gaze to the curling smoke wisping into the sky. The speakers on the Overwatch air fleet crackled to life and the voice of Reyes echoed around them.

"These are civilians, people, not soldiers. I want nonlethals used unless it comes down to the most extreme of situations. You know your jobs, and I expect you to do them right. Evacuating the civilians is priority number one out there. Protecting Ziegler and her crew are number two."

The next few hours had been spent darting in and out of the collapsing buildings to rescue as many of the trapped tenants as possible. Bomb squads had been called in to scour the rest of the city for anything left undetonated. Casualties were thankfully low, but the majority of them had been omnic citizens and humans close to them. Things were bad, but nothing she wasn't used to after her time spent in the first few months of Overwatch. She had almost felt assured in herself again, she had almost shaken the ghostly stares of her parents eyes from her back, when she had entered one of the few untouched buildings in the area.

A little girl was curled up in the corner of the room, her hands pulling at the fingers of what could only be her mother, lifeless and limp in front of her. Only inside the building could she hear her sobs, broken and scratchy after no doubt screaming herself sore. Once again, Angela found herself unable to take a step forward, haunted by the visions of her past. It was the girl who snapped her out of her stupor, raising her head to plead with her in a cracked and tearful voice.

"P....lea-se..... Miss Ang-el.... h... help my mo-mma.... She won't.... wak-e up..."

Her hand was reaching out to her, nearly close enough to run her fingers through her hair in comfort when the bomb went off. It must have been buried beneath the overturned tables in the little italian restaurant the girl had been hiding in. The blast knocked Angela across the room, slamming her against the wall. Tears squeezed through her eyes as she felt the nano-bytes reforming her seared skin and closing the bleeding hole in her side. Her body was racked with shudders as she coughed up a splatter of blood into her gloved hand. She had most definitely broken a rib, and she split her lip biting down as the small robots in her system forcefully set them into position.

She scrambled to her feet as soon as the pain reached a manageable amount, hunting for the girl who had no doubt suffered a similar fate from the blast range. Her small body had been thrown across the room, just as Angela's had. Dark red blood soaked through the pale yellow sundress she had been wearing, and her body was twisted and mangled worse than any of those she had treated before. The crack of her knees as she fell to the ground echoed throughout the empty room, piercing through the ringing of her ears. She knew the girl was dead, already gone past a point she could save, but it didn't stop her from turning the beam of her staff to the limp body. The skin and bone began to pull together and heal, but all it did was repair a corpse.

Her arms ached from the bruises caused by her collision with the wall, but she pulled the girl into her lap, brushing the matted and bloody brown hair from her forehead as tears fell unbidden on to her cheeks. She had known for a long time that not every patient can be saved, but nothing had hurt her as much as watching someone with so much life yet to live have it stolen from them. If only she hadn't hesitated, hadn't been so caught up in her own turmoil, she may have made it to her fast enough to prevent this. Her eyes fell shut as she squeezed the girl's light form against her, pouring all of her Valkyrie's power into her in grief. Even though the ringing had faded and her ears had cleared, she couldn't hear the world around her. The gunfire, the screaming, it had all fell silent as she knelt there defeated.

Only as the last of the energy in her suit ran dry did she feel the soft hand caress her cheek. Blinking away the last of her flowing tears, she looked into the face of what she could only describe as an angel. The girl was healed, her skin unbroken, her eyes burning with the flame of life as she stared up at her hopefully. Angela knew she had been lucky, she knew that she had only just been there to pull the child back from the grips of death itself. But she also knew that she would never let a patient die on her ever again, no matter what.

**Author's Note:**

> working on a short SymMercy fic so look forward to that
> 
> thanks for reading!


End file.
